New York calls for fish-friendly power plant upgrades

ALBANY, N.Y. — Power plants that suck millions of gallons of water daily out of New York rivers and lakes would have to switch to costly fish-friendly cooling towers under new rules proposed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

In draft regulations proposed Wednesday, the agency said industrial plants take more than 16 billion gallons of water daily from New York waterways for cooling, killing more than 17 billion fish and their eggs annually. Steam electric power plants account for most of the damage, with some plants using well over a billion gallons of water daily for cooling purposes, the department said.

With commonly used “once-through” cooling technology, creatures are killed when they’re sucked into water intakes, trapped against screens or overheated in the warm water that’s returned to the river or lake.

The state already requires new facilities to use closed-cycle cooling, which recycles and reuses water. That reduces the amount of water taken in by about 98 percent, minimizing the environmental impact. The new policy would require closed-cycle cooling for all existing facilities that are designed to withdraw 20 million gallons or more of water daily.

Entergy Corp.’s Indian Point nuclear plant on the Hudson River north of New York City is among the facilities potentially affected by the regulations. Environmentalists have long pushed for new technology at Indian Point. Entergy has said installation of cooling towers would cost $1.5 billion and would shut down the plant for 10 months for retrofitting.

“This is something we’ve been recommending all along,” said Manna Jo Greene, environmental director of Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. “Ten of the 13 signature Hudson River fish are in decline, and power plants are a major contributor to that decline.”

DEC calculated that the cost of retrofitting steam generating plants with the new technology would cost New York’s electric industry more than $8.5 billion over 20 years, which amounts to about 6.7 percent of the industry’s gross revenue for the period.

Facilities that demonstrate the closed-cycle cooling tower technology isn’t feasible at their location would be allowed to use alternative technologies such as screens, barrier nets and acoustic fish repellers, as long as they could show the measures reduced fish mortality by at least 90 percent.

The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that for 99 percent of large steam power plants across the country, compliance costs for implementing these alternative technologies would be less than 3 percent of revenues.

DEC notes that one of the downsides of retrofitting steam plants with closed-cycle cooling towers or alternative measures is that it would reduce generating capacity by about 4 percent. New energy production, equivalent to a new 550-megawatt steam turbine plant, would be required to offset the losses.